A Custom 404 Page

If you have own domain name, you can generate a custom 404 error page for your visitors. What does this do for you? It can help you keep visitors who may leave if they get the standard "File not found" page. Such a page looks a little like this:

File Not Found
The requested url /notafile.htm was not found on this server.

That isn't very interesting to a visitor, and if the person came from another site's link- that possible visitor may just leave. However, you can make your 404 page much more informative, and give your visitors with a way to navigate through your site. Instead of a "File Not Found" and not much else, you can drive them an error page with a professional appearance.


To begin, go to the main directory of your web site where your main page is situated through FTP or Telnet. Look for a file there named .htaccess, it begins with the dot as although it is a long file extension. If you have the file, you will want to correct it. If you do not have the file, generate a new text file and save it as ".htaccess".

If you are creating the file from scrape, simply type the following line into the file, changing the url to the position of your custom page:

ErrorDocument 404 http://www.yoursite.com/custom_page.html